Let’s put the road through here because, whynot?! Let’s have an Edisto salad tonight, because – whynot?! We’re on Edisto, home of fresh, local tomatoes, cucumbers and all sorts of vegetables except there aren’t any, not anymore.

    The road has to be built to get to the field and there is what looks like a pretty good route; it avoids the ‘grand’ trees and is a mostly straight with just enough curves to satisfy the local aesthetic.  Sure, it crosses the old farm road that runs that peculiar circuitous path through the woods. We’ll cross that old road midway between the original entry point and the other new access road to sister’s house.

    My favorite local farm stand doesn’t have local tomatoes. They come from North Carolina these days. They are okay, long keeping tomatoes; nothing special about them. They can be bought in any upscale grocery store in America like Wholefood. The farmer doesn’t grow heirloom tomatoes because he doesn’t and besides, the tomato season has passed here in SC. “Field tomatoes have moved on,” I say, “not heirlooms. You can grow those or any tomato for local use into November.”

    “These are from NC,” he says, again. I buy a few because that’s what he has and I really want the salad and maybe these will be alright when they are combined with the peeled cukes, the Vidalia onion, the corn and salt.

    There’s good high ground between the main road and the field. There are a couple of beautiful hardwood stands and there is that funny meandering road that has to be crossed. “Why?”  I have wondered for as long as I have paid any attention, “does this road wander around like this?”. This has never kept me awake at night, but whenever I thought about it at all, I wondered why the old road fools around like it does.

    When did it become necessary to import tomatoes to Edisto Island? When did the farm stand start selling waxed cucumbers? Garden farming can be – probably is – as taxing and backbreaking as cotton farming. “You would think out of work people would jump at the chance to earn a wage,” someone says when we talk about the difficulties of modest commercial garden farming. Maybe some people would think that and some people would actually jump at the chance, but those people are mostly being hounded out of the country. It can be said that we have become a soft people and that may be true, but those who say so aren’t picking tomatoes.

This road, again … The old farm road comes off the main paved road and turns NE paralleling the paved road and then, after a hundred yards or so, turns north and runs along a ways until it branches; one branch goes east to a new house and the original branch continues straight out into the field. The new road, the one I just caused to be put in, comes off the main road and goes pretty much north through the hardwoods and pine plantation into the field.  It is clear – NOW – that the old road ran its’ peculiar path because between the paved road and the field there is a beautiful stand of hardwood trees growing in a low, low section of ground about one hundred yards wide.

    The soil in this grove is very rich and moist; when it rains, the soil becomes slick and crossing it would be difficult. But cross it we did with thirteen massive truckloads of sand imported from the mainland side of the island. The old road, the meandering one that we crossed over runs along a sand ridge and avoids this beautiful boggy spot; goes right around it in fact. Who knew.

    So, there are no island tomatoes and sand has to be imported from several miles away to construct a road to get to a field that doesn’t have tomatoes in it and may never again because factory farmers only grow uniform, hardshell field tomatoes – when we grow any at all - for McDonalds and they come mostly from Mexico, Florida and other places.  

    Yes. I am whining about changing times and the discovery process that shows me that old roads are where they are for a reason and that farmers need a reason to grow tomatoes and sell them locally - and the tomatoes they grow for burger joints are not worth selling locally because they are as uniform and bland as any standardized product can be. In order to make tomato flavored tomatoes available again a farmer needs to have the stamina and skills to plant, tend and market them.  “They should be happy to have a job.”  How about three or four? No wonder agriculture is in the factory mode.

    When we find people happy to do the back breaking part of this job, picking tomatoes for a living for several months in a hot, humid, buggy climate - someone let me know, please. OH! There are people that would willingly do this work, but they are Mexican/Latin American terrorists who are taking American jobs. We’ll just import some more tasteless MacDonald’s style hardshells from the world market – salmonella and all, but the tomatoes are cheap - to sell in formerly local farm stands because, after all, that’s progress in the widest free trade meaning and they provide calories after all, just like real tomatoes.

    It’s grow your own, I guess, if you have lost interest in uniform round, red, gas-ripened tomato like fruit.

    Sand, on the other hand, we have in abundance. Sand can be bought and spread on a road here by natives who have enormous earth moving machinery. Their labor is multiplied by thousands of horsepower and 100’s of cubic yards of dirt migrate from one side of the island to the other in a matter of hours. These machines can do the works of gangs of laborers, but – they can’t plant, harvest or bring to market a local tomato.

    When we free ourselves from the need to produce our food, we gain time to produce other things and have other experiences. Make enough money and we can hire someone to produce the tomatoes and cukes, and what have you. Maybe, when we have enough security/money we will find the time to grow our tomatoes and cukes again. When the production of food becomes a bottom line business all about calorie output the food produced becomes a bottom line product.

    The new road, despite being a new road where one wasn’t before, looks pretty good and serves its’ purpose well. It’s just a road, but it DOES go to a field that might, if I can find someone stronger than me, start making real Edisto Tomatoes again. That someone would have to be a lot tougher than me. They might not even like tomatoes. I might not like them myself if I were hand tending an acre or so of heirloom tomatoes ripening over a period of several months on hot, buggy Edisto.

    Any takers?